Poor Jerry, who had been staring upward at the new-comer with the dumb admiration of an affectionate spaniel, cowered humbly under this glance and tone. “Well, yer honor,” he stammered, plucking at the buttons of his coat in embarrassment, “egor, for the matter of that--I--I don’t rightly know.” CHAPTER XXVIII--A MARINE MORNING CALL. The young man from Houghton County, strolling along behind these three men, all so busily occupied with one another, had, of a sudden, conceived the notion of dropping silently out of the party. He had put the idea into execution and was secure from observation on the farther side of the ditch, before the question of what he should do next shaped itself in his mind. Indeed, it was not until he had made his way to the little old-fashioned pier and come to an enforced halt among the empty barrels, drying nets and general marine odds and ends which littered the landing-stage, that he knew what purpose had brought him hither. But he perceived it now with great clearness. What other purpose, in truth, did existence itself contain for him? “I want to be rowed over at once to that vessel there,” he called out to John Pat, who made one of a group of Muirisc men, in white jackets and soft black hats, standing beneath him on the steps. As he descended and took his seat in one of the waiting dingeys, he noted other clusters of villagers along the shore, all concentrating an eager interest upon the yawl-rigged craft which lay at anchor in the harbor. They pointed to it incessant as they talked, and others could be seen running forward across the green to join them. He had never supposed Muirisc capable of such a display of animation. “The people seem tickled to death to get The O’Mahony back again,” he remarked to John Pat, as they shot out under the first long sweep of the oars. “They are, sir,” was the stolid response. “Did your brother come back with him--that one-armed man who went after him--Malachy, I think they called him?” “He did, sur,” said Pat, simply. “Well”--Bernard bent forward impatiently--“tell me about it! Where did he find him? What do people say?” “They do be saying manny things,” responded the oarsman, rounding his shoulders to the work. Bernard abandoned the inquiry, with a grunt of discouragement, and contented himself perforce by watching the way in which the strange craft waxed steadily in size as they sped toward her. In a minute or two more, he was alongside and clambering up a rope-ladder, which dangled its ends in the gently heaving water. Save for a couple of obviously foreign sailors lolling in the sunshine upon a sail in the bows, there was no one on deck. As he looked about, however, in speculation, the apparition of a broad, black hat, with long, curled plumes, rose above the companionway. He welcomed it with an exclamation of delight, and ran forward with outstretched hands.